Wednesday, September 14, 2005

On the scoreboard in right field it is 9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California. And a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years, and now he caps it: On his fourth no-hitter he made it a perfect game. And Sandy Koufax, whose name will always remind you of strikeouts, did it with a flurry. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books, that "K" stands out even more than the O-U-F-A-X.

Thanks to Rich Lederer for the link from his post, It Was Forty Years Ago Today... which also includes his father's original article about Koufax's perfect game from the Long Beach Independent, Press-Telegram.

So much great stuff in there - Koufax's pitching, Scully's call and two generations of quality Lederer writing. Though the game is well before my time, I can listen to Scully's call in my head as I read it -- and it's fantastic!